Mpongwe

“ They generally live at peace within the family and the village. The men, at least, rarely fight. Whenever I heard that an Mpongwe fight was in progress, I rushed to the scene; but I must confess to mixed motives. For a fight among Mpongwe men is decidedly picturesque and entertaining, since they fight by butting each other in the stomach with their heads. The women are much more quarrelsome, and these very belles, whose beauty I have praised, have frequent quarrels and occasional fights, the latter usually involving a number of women ”

“ Another factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe is the demoralization of domestic life incident to methods of trade. The Mpongwe man is a trader by instinct. In shrewdness and diplomacy I doubt whether he has a superior among all the tribes of West Africa. ”

“ The different sub-tribes or clans of the Mpongwé are ruled by their headmen, the principal chief of a district being dignified with the title of king. Dignity has, as we all know, its drawbacks as well as its privileges, and among the Mpongwé it has its pains as well as its pleasures. When once a man is fairly made king, he may do much as he likes, and is scarcely ever crossed in anything that he may desire. But the process of coronation was anything but agreeable, and utterly unlike the gorgeous ceremony with which civilized men are so familiar. ”

“ An Mpongwe, after having his hair cut, gathers up every hair most carefully and burns it lest an enemy should secure it and use it to his injury. When sickness continues for a length of time they usually conclude that some offended relation has caused an evil spirit to abide in the town. ”

“ From that time I had charge of the Gaboon Church, besides the work among the Fang. In particular I undertook the training of an Mpongwe candidate for the ministry, who since Mr. Boppell’s departure was occupying the pulpit and preaching very acceptably. This man, Iguwi, I instructed four hours each week; but after most of the year had passed, I felt that I could perhaps spend the time to better advantage.
Iguwi was the best educated and the most eccentric man of the entire Mpongwe tribe. He was a monk by nature. The African is distinctly a marrying man. He is usually very much married. ”

“ Devoted to trade and become a people of brokers, of go-betweens, of middle-men, the Mpongwe have now acquired an ease and propriety, a polish and urbanity of manner which contrasts strongly with the Kru-men and other tribes, who, despite generations of intercourse with Europeans, are rough and barbarous as their forefathers. The youths used to learn English, which they spoke fluently and with tolerable accent, but always barbarously ”

“ If the word ‘Pongo’ be of African origin, it is probably a corruption of the word Mpongwe, the name of the tribe on the banks of the Gaboon, and hence applied to the region they inhabit. Their local name for the Chimpanzee is Enché-eko, as near as it can be Anglicized, from [Pg 45] which the common term ‘Jocko’ probably comes. The Mpongwe appellation for its new congener is Engé-ena, prolonging the sound of the first vowel, and slightly sounding the second. ”

“ The Mpongwe are the proudest people of West Africa. An African woman is never allowed to marry into an inferior tribe; although the men may do so. And since the Mpongwe have no social equals among the adjacent tribes, it follows that no Mpongwe woman can marry outside of her own tribe, unless with a north-coast man or a white man. The Fang, the great interior tribe, are mere “bush-animals” in the mind of the Mpongwe. A Fang man, though he were perfectly civilized, and even educated in France, would not be allowed the social status of the meanest Mpongwe. The coast women can all speak Fang ”

“ Every hysterical woman who thought that she saw a leopard was ready to swear that it was Ndinga. If the leopards had been active in the community at that time all their doings would have been charged against him.
34The Mpongwe women are regarded as the best-looking and most graceful women on the entire coast. Wherever there are communities of white men, even hundreds of miles north and south of Gaboon, there are Mpongwe women; for it is with them more than the women of any other tribe that white men form temporary alliances. ”

“ The slave is thrown out into the bush—no one will take the trouble to dig a hole for him.
The industry of the Mpongwe is that of the African generally; every man is a host in himself; he builds and furnishes his house, he makes his weapons and pipes, and he ignores division of labour, except in the smith and the carpenter; in the potter, who works without a wheel, and in the dyer, who knows barks, and who fixes his colours with clay. The men especially pride themselves upon canoe-making; the favourite wood is the buoyant Okumeh or bombax, that monarch of the African forest. ”

“ The native form of government among the Mpongwe is somewhat patriarchal; authority belongs to the head of the family, the head of the clan and the head of the tribe. The native reverence for the authority of these men is the saving virtue that sustains the tribe. But the chief’s authority and this reverence are destroyed together when the people see him tied up occasionally and flogged ”

“ It is undoubtedly the wildest bit of West Africa.
The dominant tribes here have, for as far back as we can get evidence—some short four hundred years—been tribes of the Mpongwe stem—the so-called noble tribes. To-day they are dying—going off the face of the earth, leaving behind them nothing to bear testimony in this world to their great ability, save the most marvellously beautiful language, the Greek of Africa, as Dr. Nassau calls it, and the impress of their more elaborate thought-form on the minds of the bush tribes that come into contact with them. ”

“ Several Mpongwe men have told me that their slaves were children of the interior whom they had rescued when their parents had thrown them away, either into the bush to perish by the beasts, or into the river. They must have been driven to this by some cruel superstition; for the African loves his children, and the mother of his children is his favourite wife. Perhaps the children were twins. In many tribes there is such a fear of twins that they are often put to death and their mother with them. In some of these tribes they are believed to be the result of adultery with a spirit. ”

“ A LIVING REMNANT The diminishing number of the Mpongwe, the hostility of the climate, the insistence by the government that French must be the language of the schools, the great difficulty of procuring a corps of French-speaking missionaries, the curse of rum, the presence of a large community of white men and the natural irresponsibility of the white man in Africa—all these have combined to limit the work of our mission among the Mpongwe and to make it exceedingly difficult. ”

“ The progress of this African community, implied in the choice of such a one as Okeh for leader, has leaped across uncounted centuries.
The man whom the Mpongwe church has recognized as pastor for many years—though he was never ordained—was born a slave. The place of highest authority is attainable to those in every rank; no class is especially privileged; no privileges are hereditary; there is no such thing as caste within this society ”

“ Commerce and intercourse with whites has made the Mpongwe, once the rudest, now one of the most civilized of African tribes; and, upon the whole, there is an improvement. The exact Barbot (iv. 9) tells us "the Gaboon blacks are barbarous, wild, bloody, and treacherous, very thievish and crafty, especially towards strangers. The women, on the contrary, are as civil and courteous to them, and will use all possible means to enjoy their company; but both sexes are the most wretchedly poor and miserable of any in Guinea, and yet so very haughty, that they are perfectly ridiculous ... ”

“ Upon the Gaboon River is a well-known negro tribe called Mpongwé.
Perhaps on account of their continual admixture with traders, they approach nearer to civilization than those tribes which have been described, and are peculiarly refined in their manners, appearance, and language. They are very fond of dress, and the women in particular are remarkable for their attention to the toilet. They wear but little clothing, their dark, velvet-like skin requiring scarcely any covering, and being admirably suited for setting off the ornaments with which they plentifully bedeck themselves. ”

“ White traders all along the coast employ the Mpongwe as middlemen between them and the interior people, who possess the export products. The white man gives the middleman a certain quantity of goods on trust. With these he goes to the interior and establishes a small trading-post in one or 48several towns. It is a life of privation and danger, a lonely, miserable existence, but he endures it with patience for the joyful hope that at the end of a year or two he may return to his beloved town and family in Gaboon, so rich that he can afford to “rip” for six months ”

“ This demoralization of domestic life is even worse for the Mpongwe women than for their absent husbands. There is a large settlement of white men in Gaboon, most of them government officials.... Nearly all the Mpongwe women become the mistresses of these men.... The marriage tie in Gaboon has long ceased to be a “tie.”... The Protestant Christians of Gaboon are a very small community; but they are the best Christians I have known in Africa. They alone of the Mpongwe have good-sized families of healthy children. They are the living remnant of a dying tribe. ”

“ Hence the Mpongwe kings of the Gaboon region in West Africa are buried secretly lest their heads should fall into the hands of men of another tribe, who would make a powerful fetish out of the brains.234 Again, in Togoland, West Africa, the kings of the Ho tribe are buried with great secrecy in the forest, and a false grave is made ostentatiously in the king's house. ”

“ Suddenly all became silent, and the elders of the people rose, and said solemnly (the people repeating after them) , "Now we choose you for our king; we engage to listen to you, and to obey you."
Then there was silence; and presently the silk hat, of "stove-pipe" fashion, which is the emblem of royalty among the Mpongwe and several other tribes, was brought in, and placed on Njogoni's head. ”

“ Cutting and maiming are punished by the fine of a slave.
And now briefly to resume the character of the Mpongwe, a nervous and excitable race of negroes. The men are deficient in courage, as the women are in chastity, and neither sex has a tincture of what we call morality. To commercial shrewdness and eagerness they add exceptional greed of gain and rascality; foreign rum and tobacco, dress and ornaments, arms and ammunition have been necessaries to them; they will have them, and, unless they can supply themselves by licit, they naturally fly to illicit means. ”

“ Not being able to strike back in this unequal warfare and preferring an enemy whom he could kick (for this individual wore shoes and scarcely anything else) he lost spirit and finally pulled down the entire town and built in another place. Women and children never possess the skulls of ancestors. The power of the ancestor is more often used against women than others. Among the Mpongwe and some other tribes a woman may worship her ancestors ”

“ At Duke-town an Ibo woman also cut up a man, sun- dried the flesh, and sold it for monkey's meat—she took sanctuary at the mission house. Yet it is in full vigour amongst their Ibo neighbours to the north-west, and the Duallas of the Camarones River also number it amongst their "country customs." The Mpongwe, as has been said, will not eat a chimpanzee; the Fán devour their dead enemies. ”

“ One goes to a wedding, and it turns out that the groom is a leopard in the form of a man, who in the midst of the ceremony carries off the bride. One goes to a funeral and the corpse sits up and talks or breaks loose and runs away. This is the atmosphere in which the African lives.
Among the semi-civilized Mpongwe of Gaboon, when sickness seems likely to prove fatal, the friends and relations from far and near gather into the house of the sick, as many as can crowd inside, and sit about on the floor, quietly expectorating, or smoking and expectorating, but always expectorating. ”

“ Old travellers record a belief that, unlike all other Guinea races, the Mpongwe marries his mother, sister, or daughter; and they compare the practice with that of the polished Persians and the Peruvian Incas, who thus kept pure the solar and lunar blood. If this "breeding-in" ever existed, no trace of it now remains; on the contrary, every care is taken to avoid marriages of consanguinity. Bowdich, indeed, assures us that a man may not look at nor converse with his mother-in-law, on pain of a heavy, perhaps a ruinous fine ”

“ The dialect changes the final as well as the initial syllable, a process unknown to the purest types of the South African family. As we advance north we find this phenomenon ever increasing; for instance in Fernando Po; but the Mpongwe limits the change to verbs.
Another distinguishing point of these three Gaboon tongues, as the Rev. Mr. Mackey observes, is "the surprizing flexibility of the verb, the almost endless variety of parts regularly derived from a single root. ”

“ Formerly a cook at the Gaboon, he is a man of note in his tribe, as the hunter always is; he holds the position of a country gentleman, who can afford to write himself M.F.H.; he is looked upon as a man of valour; he is admired by the people, and he is adored by his wives—one of them at once took up her station upon the marital knee. Perhaps the Nimrod of Mbátá is just a little henpecked—the Mpongwe mostly are—and I soon found out that soigner les femmes is the royal road to getting on with the men. ”

“ The Mpongwe "Mwetye" is a branch of male freemasonry into which women and strangers are never initiated. The Bakele and Shekyani, according to "Western Africa" (Wilson, pp. 391-2) , consider it a "Great Spirit." Nothing is more common amongst adjoining negro tribes than to annex one another's superstitions, completely changing, withal, their significance. "Ovengwá" is a vampire, the apparition of a dead man; tall as a tree, always winking and clearly seen, which is not the case with the Ibámbo and Ilogo, plurals of Obambo and Ologo. ”